Prom 26 - 5.08.14: EUYO / London Voices, Petrenko

[Blotto]

Second - Berio wasn't a Serial composer (pace Arnold Whittall), and Sinfonia isn't a Serial work.

He certainly didn't sound like it but I read some references to him having been.

I have greater difficulty with this statement than I do with the concept of "Musical Positivism" (which is simply a rejection of the "extra-Musical", programmatic concerns of the Late Romantics - the aural equivalent of "Logical Positivism").

First - Serialism is a purely Musical phenomenon, because it works only with aural material. There aren't any Serial Sculptors, or Serial Novelists (what Dickens did uses a different meaning ) because vision and language don't have the inherent properties of, say, a Major Third or a minor seventh that enable them to be treated Serially. It is pure (or, if you prefer, "purely") Music, exploring and presenting areas of perception and reception in ways in ways in which only Sound can be explored and presented.

I've never understood serialism. I will study the above and give it careful thought.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

When something is as diverse and literate and multi-lingual as this, how does one appreciate it?

Rather as one appreciates the multi-culturalism of Eliot's The Waste Land or Pound's Cantos - a process is started by an interest in the work involved. If it doesn't interest, then you leave it alone for another time, or another work. If it does, you can either just accept the sheer pleasure of the sound, or the oddness, or the fragments and leave it at that level of appreciation. Or, you can take it further and investigate further the sources and background of the different elements - making new connections between them; hearing how the different materials reflect on each other - just as the different fragments of Musical quotations suggest connections between them - suggestions that may not exist; the Art may lie in the mere suggestions they spark in a listener. And may well depend as much on the listener's ability to odentify the sourceworks whence the quotation come; if these aren't known, a listener can still enjoy the sheer ride of event to event.

In this respect if no other, Berio's multi-cultural Sinfonia is no different from Ives' monocultural Fourth Symphony.

are the rhythms of the phrases substantially to be appreciated as rhythm and therefore as music?

The rhythms, vowel sounds and consonants, fricatives, plosives etc ... yes. Verbal language becomes sound treated as Music - the scat singing of the Swingle Singers is the starting point of a spectrum of Vocal sounds (Speech - sprechgesang - singing - scatting [? - I think I've just invented a verb!] - "vocalizing").

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

He certainly didn't sound like it but I read some references to him having been.

Berio's early work of the 1950s use Serial techniques, but he - "abandoned" isn't the right word - incorporated elements of Serialism into his works from the 60s onwards whilst subsuming these into a wider "larder" of compositional techniques.

He was Steve Reich's teacher for a term or so. He was the one who told Reich that if he didn't want to compose "atonal"/"serial" works he shouldn't do so, but should concentrate on creating his own brand of "tonality". Shortly thereafter, Reich went to Ghana to study drumming techniques.

[teamsaint]

I have greater difficulty with this statement than I do with the concept of "Musical Positivism" (which is simply a rejection of the "extra-Musical", programmatic concerns of the Late Romantics - the aural equivalent of "Logical Positivism").

First - Serialism is a purely Musical phenomenon, because it works only with aural material. There aren't any Serial Sculptors, or Serial Novelists (what Dickens did uses a different meaning ) because vision and language don't have the inherent properties of, say, a Major Third or a minor seventh that enable them to be treated Serially. It is pure (or, if you prefer, "purely") Music, exploring and presenting areas of perception and reception in ways in ways in which only Sound can be explored and presented. (Which is not the same thing as saying that Serialism is the only way that Sound can be explored and presented; Serialism is merely a tool - a method of working that composers can use, adapt or ignore as they feel fit. Which leads me to ...

Second - Berio wasn't a Serial composer (pace Arnold Whittall), and Sinfonia isn't a Serial work.

You say that serialism is a way of presenting sound or music, (and thus meaning) and that it is merely a tool.

Its not a very big jump then in literature, to the see work of Structuralists,Barthes, and post Structuralists, in using new systematic techniques of analysis and reading (tools)as a way of revealing meaning? the other side of the coin?

Would it be completely unreasonable to view those types of critical theory as an oblique, or partial response to (developments like) Serialism?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Would it be completely unreasonable to view those types of critical theory as an oblique, or partial response to Serialism?

Not "completely", no - from my own limited direct experience of Derrida (vive la differance!) I'm more inclined to regard post-war Serialism and Structuralism as sharing (or simply "coming from") a common intellectual milieu. I'm not sure how aware of Serialism Piaget (for example) was - Barthes and Boulez were acquainted, and Levi Strauss dedicated much of his work to "proving" that Serial Music was "unnatural". A passing thought occurs that European interest in Aleatoricism occured at the same time that Deconstructionist ideas first reached a wider readership ...

[Blotto]

In fact, I only listened to the Berio as an after-thought following another listen to the Shostakovich. I hadn't heard the 4th symphony before but went very hopefully to the hall after hearing several others in the last year. On the night, at far end of the gallery opposite the orchestra, the sound was quite powerless and I came home disappointed. Hearing the broadcast, the forceful and skilful qualities are very clear; in the hall, the sound had evidently ballooned to diffusion. You were right to recommend it so confidently, f, because it's a wonderful piece and an absolutely full hour of music with very striking orchestral effects.

I think the impression I'd had of Shostakovich was of quite slight music, formless melodies with much unison playing and not very interesting, thin textures. On reflection, it may well be that characterisation came from hearing snatches of it on a TV in my younger years. There are such moments - unison, much space in the orchestral sound - but they are moments of variety amongst often much more massive sound. The single greatest surprise and pleasure of the music is the clear drive and its variety. I'd liked the piano concertos but they were the only pieces I knew and are quite light music. It's rather exciting to find the symphonies seem incomparably more serious but nonetheless immediate and approachable. The one significant difference in my listening from other posters is in failing really to hear the programme in the music which is so evident to them. I don't hear desolation in the ending but mystery; I do catch the shrill of hysteria at one point in the first movement but the 'chug' and boosts of energy aren't a negative force in their tone to me.

[teamsaint]

Not "completely", no - from my own limited direct experience of Derrida (vive la differance!) I'm more inclined to regard post-war Serialism and Structuralism as sharing (or simply "coming from") a common intellectual milieu. I'm not sure how aware of Serialism Piaget (for example) was - Barthes and Boulez were acquainted, and Levi Strauss dedicated much of his work to "proving" that Serial Music was "unnatural". A passing thought occurs that European interest in Aleatoricism occured at the same time that Deconstructionist ideas first reached a wider readership ...

And to pick up on your passing thought, I had always thought of post war literary theory as being very much in the vanguard of more widespread intellectual thought, (a pretty broad and probably superficial reading I admit), but discussion of serialism in this context makes me reconsider. Looked at from the particular perspective of an interest in literary theory,and how it is applied, Schoenberg's work looks incredibly far sighted. Well to me at any rate.

Is there a particular field of study which compares such developments across different areas (and times) such as music, literature, visual art etc ?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Is there a particular field of study which compares such developments across different areas (and times) such as music, literature, visual art etc ?

Synaesthesia?

[Serial_Apologist]

Schoenberg's work looks incredibly far sighted. Well to me at any rate.

Is there a particular field of study which compares such developments across different areas (and times) such as music, literature, visual art etc ?

Back in the '60s, when modern music was new and more exciting than it now is to the jaded me, (aaaaah - altogether now), and I was buying up every book on the subject I could lay my puny income on, one book that made something of an impression was Donald Mitchell's "The Language of Modern Music". My copy fell apart many years ago, but I do remember Mitchell making detailed comparisons between Schoenberg's 12-tone composition and Cubism. I was reading it and forcefully insisting, "No, no - different aesthetic altogether!" and in an afterword tagged on at the end of the book, which was a revised reprint, the author added that since the first edition had come out several people had contacted him, arguing a more valid analogy with Cubism was to be found in the music Stravinsky composed after "The Rite" - pieces such as "Les Noces", "Ragtime" and "The Soldier's Tale". He added that, now it had come to his attention, he could see the obvious parallels, and realised how odd it was that these had never occurred to him beforehand!

Years and years later, Sir Simon Rattle introduced Stravinsky's setting of "Happy Birthday" at a Prom, rightly describing it as a Cubist piece of music, inasmuch as the bits were all present and correct, but not where one would necessarily expect to find them! I think it was Ferney here who recently made reference to the chopped up word settings in "Oedipus Rex" as Cubistic.

It seems obvious to me that ideas that are in the air at any given point in history are going to find analogous expression in different means of expression, whether linguistic, philosophical, artistic, musical, economic or political; the results will be analogous across the different forms - Schoenberg painting as part of the Blaue Reiter group of Expressionists prior to WW1 finding subsequent analogies in his friend Kandinsky's three stages of inspiration, the latter roughly parallelling Schoenberg's evolution of formalisation from free-associative forms in the "free atonal" period of his and his pupils' work. Language can point towards, but it is always of the menu, descriptive rather than of what the menu treats.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It seems obvious to me that ideas that are in the air at any given point in history are going to find analogous expression in different means of expression, whether linguistic, philosophical, artistic, musical, economic or political; the results will be analogous across the different forms - Schoenberg painting as part of the Blaue Reiter group of Expressionists prior to WW1 finding subsequent analogies in his friend Kandinsky's three stages of inspiration, the latter roughly parallelling Schoenberg's evolution of formalisation from free-associative forms in the "free atonal" period of his and his pupils' work. Language can point towards, but it is always of the menu, descriptive rather than of what the menu treats.

- there are a couple of books that explore the Schönberg/Kandinsky relationship, the first (crimnially out-of-print), is a compilation of the words and images of the two men:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arnold-Schoenberg-Wassily-Kandinsky-Documents/dp/0571131948/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409033543&sr=1-2&keywords=schoenberg+kandinsky

... the other has more comment, full colour illustrations and an accompanying CD:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schoenberg-Kandinsky-Blue-Rider-Rosenbaum/dp/185759312X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409033543&sr=1-1&keywords=schoenberg+kandinsky

Great stuff; after the death of Mahler, Kandinsky was the recipient of Schönberg's inner musings on the nature of Music and Art (this was at a time when AS was nearly as active as a painter as he was a composer) - but, frustratingly, all pre-Serialism: the friendship broke down after WW1, depriving us of the correspondence in which AS communicated his developing ideas that culminated in the method of composing with the twelve notes of the chromatic scale related only to each other.

AFAIK, there isn't any literature on the connections between different cultural ideas in the years after WW2. I know a couple of people who told me that they were interested in investigating links between Structuralism and Music (superficially, this should have quite straightforward cross-fertilization of ideas), but neither got beyond initial ponderings. Perhaps the ideas are still up in the air, too close for the distancing needed for a panoramic perspective - perhaps (and this may be the same thing) the ideas are too involved for worthwhile overviews to be made - a writer who can summarize Serialism fully clearly, and who can also do the same for Deridda? That's a big ask!

But that's "AFAIK" - if anyone knows of any literature which disproves what I'm saying, I'd be delighted to discover it.

[teamsaint]

Returning to Berio, this looks like it might be interesting.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09298218808570531#.U_xLBfldVyU

Ferney/S-A, I am assuming that this would be a cornerstone of discussions on musical and literary theory?

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N-jG2U6eb4IC&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=compare+structuralism+and+serialism&source=bl&ots=VnGDFEFcXl&sig=gt15GcjcRayXe1fS96ZAkF0z0wk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ikr8U5CsNemQ7AbMooDYDQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=compare%20structuralism%20and%20serialism&f=false

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Returning to Berio, this looks like it might be interesting.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...1#.U_xLBfldVyU

Looks good.

Ferney/S-A, I am assuming that this would be a cornerstone of discussions on musical and literary theory?
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N...ialism&f=false

That link only takes me to a message that says "Get Off My Land!", sadly, ts!

[teamsaint]

Looks good.


That link only takes me to a message that says "Get Off My Land!", sadly, ts!

Really ? Crazy !!

It should lead to some very sizeable extracts from "Boulez, Music and Philosophy" by Edward Campbell, in Google Books.

Does this work?

http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Boulez_Music_and_Philosophy.html?id=N-jG2U6eb4IC&redir_esc=y

i can assure you that i have no substantial lands, and if I did there would be freedom of access !!!!!!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That one works! I'd missed the publication of this earlier in the year - the description does look promising. I think £20 will be going towards Mr Campbell's royalties at the end of the week.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In fact, Mr Campbell's Pension Fund will be even further furnished as he also wrote this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-After-Deleuze-Encounters/dp/1441157026/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409049586&sr=1-2